Mullah,
I have proven by many academic quotes in my long post that the god Sin is Allah. You ignored them. YOU must take them one by one, and show why they are wrong. I have already done the proving. All you did was contradict it, with NOT one reference, (and don't even think of using your holy book). Then you said that Islam came from monotheistic culture. Any historian knows that is 110 % false. The fact that you either know so little, or want to lie about it raises the questions of both your ignorance and you motives, (as Free said). You appear to be totally ignorant of Ancient History, and yes, I am a scholar, (a student anyway), so you are wrong about that also. I posted many academic references, and you ignored them all.

I have proven that Allah developed FROM the god Sin, as they had the same identical mythological daughters, and in fact even Mohammed thought so, as he put the Satanic Verses in the book, and then removed them, when it was convenient.

You have offered not one scholar as a support for your claims. You have negated not one of mine. Your rebuttals are opinions, supported by no evidence, just your opinions, and no references. Al-Ilah, BEFORE it meant "the god" was the crescent phase of the moon. You have NOT disproven that.

You have now changed your tune, after saying Islam was from a monotheistic culture, and attempted to explain away the fact that many hundreds of gods were worshiped in the Kabala at the time of Muhammad. ANd don't even start trying to say was was historical by QUran quotes. That's ludicrous. It's like quoting the Bible to prove the Bible. It's utterly circular. You don't even know what that means. The question is not whether Islam IS monotheistic, but what it developed from. Again, you have attempted to evade the argument. It's very obvious.

Again, I will post point by point, my refutations sometime this weekend. It will be easy.

Insufferable know-it-all.
Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music - Friedrich Nietzsche

(11-01-2013 10:23 AM)Bucky Ball Wrote: Mullah,
I have proven by many academic quotes in my long post that the god Sin is Allah. You ignored them. YOU must take them one by one, and show why they are wrong. I have already done the proving. All you did was contradict it, with NOT one reference, (and don't even think of using your holy book). Then you said that Islam came from monotheistic culture. Any historian knows that is 110 % false. The fact that you either know so little, or want to lie about it raises the questions of both your ignorance and you motives, (as Free said). You appear to be totally ignorant of Ancient History, and yes, I am a scholar, (a student anyway), so you are wrong about that also. I posted many academic references, and you ignored them all.

I have proven that Allah developed FROM the god Sin, as they had the same identical mythological daughters, and in fact even Mohammed thought so, as he put the Satanic Verses in the book, and then removed them, when it was convenient.

You have offer not one scholar as a support for your claims. You have negated not one of mine. Your rebuttal are opinions, supported by no evidence, just your opinions, and no references. Al-Ilah, BEFORE it meant "the god" was the crescent phase of the moon. You have NOT disproven that.

You have now changed your tune, after saying Islam was from a monotheistic culture, and attempted to explain away the fact that many hundreds of gods were worshiped in the Kabala at the time of Muhammad. ANd don't even start trying to say was was historical by QUran quotes. That's ludicrous. It's like quoting the Bible to prove the Bible. It's utterly circular. You don't even know what that means. The question is not whether Islam IS monotheistic, but what it developed from. Again, you have attempted to evade the argument. It's very obvious.

Again, I will post point by point, my refutations sometime this weekend. It will be easy.

First of all, don't even say that I "ignored them" because that is a pure lie. I took your academic quotes one by one and explained how each of them fails to prove that Sin is Allah. If you're going to include academic quotes again, in your next post, then you should also explain in your own words how the said quote proves that Sin is Allah. And please don't mix religion with culture. The words "monotheistic culture" doesn't really make good sense to me because "monotheistic" is religious while "culture" is simply cultural. As I said before, Islam is a monotheistic religion and you can't change that fact no matter how much you disagree or argue against it. And Islam didn't develop from any pagan culture either. I don't disagree that the Arabs used to worship hundreds of gods even at the time of Muhammad, but you have no proof for your assertion that that is what Islam developed from. It seems like you just want to believe that, but you didn't provide any specific reasoning nor historical evidence for the idea that Islam originated from a non-monotheistic culture.

As a matter of fact, the message of Islam was completely an opposite of the cultural lifestyle and the beliefs of the Arabs living at that time. That is one of the main reasons why the pagans of that time strongly opposed Muhammad and the message that he was preaching. They mocked him and they cursed him and they even tried to kill him in order to put an end to Islam even though many of them were people of his own clan, the Quraysh. They hated the religion that he was preaching. They hated it because it was the opposite of everything that they believed in. They also hated Muhammad because he destroyed all their idols, moon gods, statues, and everything else they used to worship as "gods" inside the Kaaba.

To put all of that into context, the Kaaba in Mecca was originally a place of monotheistic worship that was first given to Abraham according to tradition and it was devoted to the worship of the one and only God, Allah. So the Kaaba was first and foremost built for the purpose of a monotheistic religion. However, as the years passed by, the concept of the monotheism of Islam came to be contaminated. The descendants of Abraham became too numerous to live all in the valley of Mecca and those who went to settle elsewhere took with them stones from the holy precinct and performed certain rites in honor of them. And later, through the influence of neighboring pagan tribes, the stones came to be symbolized as idols and then slowly the pagan pilgrims started to bring some of those idols into the Kaaba itself. It was Muhammad who destroyed all the idols in the Kaaba in order to restore the house back to it's monotheistic purpose, the way it is today, and the way it was intended to be before paganism took over.

As for your claim that Allah had the same identical daughters as Sin, I have already pointed out the fallacy of that argument, which you still haven't refuted. So, every time you say that you "proved" that Sin and Allah had the same identical daughters, I will just put up a link to that post in order to expose the errors of that argument to everyone until you actually quote what I wrote and attempt to refute it. Maybe you're not doing it because you know that you are wrong, and so you're probably just trying to cover up your shame and your guilt of being wrong by saying that I "ignored them" and pretending as if you are right. I've been getting a suspicion of that the more I debate with you. And I highly doubt that you are even anything close to a scholar. Okay, you might be just a student of history, but I don't believe that you're a scholar. Even if you are, you are clearly doing a terrible job in trying to support the idea that Allah was a moon god in so many ways.

And when you said that Al-ilah was a phase of the moon "BEFORE it meant 'the god,'" where is your source for that? I mean, where did you read that it was "before" and not after? You didn't provide any historical evidence nor any logical explanations whatsoever to support that particular claim. You're just saying it, but you gave no academic citations for that nor presented any kind of reasoning to actually prove that.

Once again, as I mentioned earlier, "Al-ilah" was a generic word that simply meant "the god" in the Arabic language, as attested by a countless number of academic references. Therefore, the word "Al-ilah" could have equally applied to any other god by the Arab speakers. For example, Sin, Hubal, Wadd, Amm, Alqamah, etc. can all be called "ilah" (meaning "god") or even "Al-ilah" (meaning "the god") by whoever believed in them at the time. But that is not the same thing as calling them "Allah." And the possibility that a similar name was the name of a moon god as well doesn't necessarily mean that one of them was derived from the other. It's a non-sequitur. There could be many other pairs of words or names in Arabic, or in any other language, that simply sound alike, but it might be just a coincidence because two words having similar sounds doesn't necessarily prove that there is a connection between the two.

More importantly, the idea that the name "Allah" originated from the name of a moon god (whatever it is) definitely lacks historical/academic support. You don't even have to be a scholar to know this. This is evident by the fact that there are so many books and resources on the history of Islam which say nothing about a moon god being turned into Allah. It is just a fringe theory which is so unpopular and unsupported in the academic world that no one even bothers to disprove it. That's why there is hardly any mention of this in most of the history books about Islam. So, the thing is that I am not the one who needs to provide academic references in order to disprove the idea that Allah originated from Sin. Why? Because you weren't able to prove that in the first place. But I still managed to smash all your arguments, one by one. And I will keep doing this over and over again, even a million times, if I have to. I look forward to your next rebuttal as well. And you can take as long as you want, but I can guarantee that you're fighting a losing battle with me no matter how hard you try and I will not back down and I will prove it to everyone.

(11-01-2013 09:39 AM)Chas Wrote: You call those answers? You did not address the questions I asked.

Yes, those are answers indeed. And I addressed the questions that you asked. Your question was, "Why would any woman with any intelligence and self-respect be a Muslim? Then, in this post, I explained that Islam doesn't undermine a woman's intelligence nor her self-respect. So your implication that a woman with any level of intelligence and self-respect doesn't have a good reason to be a Muslim is wrong in the first place. That question was almost like a no-brainer to me. I mean, it's almost the same as asking "Why would any man with any intelligence and self-respect be a Christian?"

I don't know why you would even ask such a question as if the answer is not obvious to you, but I still answered your question anyways.

... I still want to know why embassies are so hated by Muslim communities....

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

(11-01-2013 09:39 AM)Chas Wrote: You call those answers? You did not address the questions I asked.

Yes, those are answers indeed. And I addressed the questions that you asked. Your question was, "Why would any woman with any intelligence and self-respect be a Muslim? Then, in this post, I explained that Islam doesn't undermine a woman's intelligence nor her self-respect. So your implication that a woman with any level of intelligence and self-respect doesn't have a good reason to be a Muslim is wrong in the first place. That question was almost like a no-brainer to me. I mean, it's almost the same as asking "Why would any man with any intelligence and self-respect be a Christian?"

I don't know why you would even ask such a question as if the answer is not obvious to you, but I still answered your question anyways.

No, a woman has a subservient position in Islam. Why would anyone submit to that?

Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.

(14-01-2013 07:34 AM)Chas Wrote: No, a woman has a subservient position in Islam. Why would anyone submit to that?

Because "Allah has made one of them to excel the other". Jeez, Chas, is it so hard to understand?

Also, the Prophet said, "I looked at Paradise and found poor people forming the majority of its inhabitants; and I looked at Hell and saw that the majority of its inhabitants were women."

Face it, Charles, we are inferior to you and that's that. Might as well learn to deal with it. Also, we tempt you with our mere existence and it is our fault and not yours, when you rape us. For which we do apologise.

That would explain why men tend to be stronger physically... all to overpower and rape women.

I don't like that reason.

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

(13-09-2012 03:02 PM)Internet Mullah Wrote: How can he have the knowledge of all the science, astronomy, the stars, the earth, the moon, oceanography, and so many other things contained in the Quran? Was he just guessing luckily getting everything correct?

Care to elaborate on how the Qu'ran contains any (scientific) knowledge that Muhammad couldn't have had at the time?

Quote:First of all, don't even say that I "ignored them" because that is a pure lie. I took your academic quotes one by one and explained how each of them fails to prove that Sin is Allah. If you're going to include academic quotes again, in your next post, then you should also explain in your own words how the said quote proves that Sin is Allah.

You need to understand that when it comes to beliefs, nothing can be proven nor disproven. What it all comes down to is who provides the best evidence to support the best argument.

Unfortunately for you, Bucky provided the best argument. Also unfortunately for you, you failed to acknowledge that Bucky provided the best argument. This amounts to nothing less than intellectual dishonesty.

Quote:And please don't mix religion with culture. The words "monotheistic culture" doesn't really make good sense to me because "monotheistic" is religious while "culture" is simply cultural.

Who the fuck are you trying to fool here? Are you trying to tell me that Muslims don't mix religion with culture? If this was true, then perhaps you would like to explain to the rest of us why Muslims are still dressing themselves in clothing resembling the 6th century Arabian era; why non-Muslims are not permitted to enter the "religious" city of Mecca and most of Medina, and why the most widely distributed Quran (the Hilali-Khan translation) interpolates a custom of hatred towards Christians and Jews in its translation?

Those 3 things I have listed above come from cultural and traditional beliefs and are indeed 100% of the Islamic belief system.

Quote:As I said before, Islam is a monotheistic religion and you can't change that fact no matter how much you disagree or argue against it. And Islam didn't develop from any pagan culture either. I don't disagree that the Arabs used to worship hundreds of gods even at the time of Muhammad, but you have no proof for your assertion that that is what Islam developed from. It seems like you just want to believe that, but you didn't provide any specific reasoning nor historical evidence for the idea that Islam originated from a non-monotheistic culture.

Again, he did indeed provide links, arguments, and reasoning to support his argument. You are simply using intellectual dishonesty to deny it, and are fooling nobody on this forum. The archaeological and historical evidence clearly indicates that Islam finds its roots buried in the traditional beliefs of the Arabians during his time, and also I will demonstrate conclusively that certain Quranic verses are not original to the Quran, but were ripped off from earlier texts that were circulating in Arabia during Muhammad's time.

According to two verses in the Qur'an, Jesus Christ (with the permission of Allah) created a clay bird which he blew into and brought to life.

"And (make him) a messenger to the Children of Israel (saying): I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, that I determine for you out of dust the form of a bird, then I breathe into it and it becomes a bird with Allah’s permission, and I heal the blind and the leprous, and bring the dead to life with Allah’s permission; and I inform you of what you should eat and what you should store in your houses. Surely there is a sign in this for you, if you are believers."

Qur'an 5:110:

"When Allah will say: O Jesus, son of Mary, remember My favour to thee and to thy mother, when I strengthened thee with the Holy Spirit; thou spokest to people in the cradle and in old age, and when I taught thee the Book and the Wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel, and when thou didst determine out of clay a thing like the form of a bird by My permission, then thou didst breathe into it and it became a bird by My permission; and thou didst heal the blind and the leprous by My permission; and when thou didst raise the dead by My permission; and when I withheld the Children of Israel from thee when thou camest to them with clear arguments -- but those of them who disbelieved said: This is nothing but clear enchantment."

Now compare those two Quranic verses with the two known texts below:

Apocryphal Account

This story is a clear parallelism of two apocrypha, which are as follows:

The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ.

This is also known as The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour, and was written around 400 CE.

"And when the Lord Jesus was seven years of age, he was on a certain day with other boys his companions about the same age. 2. Who at play made clay into several shapes, namely, asses, oxen, birds, and other figures. 3. Each boasting of his work and endeavoring to exceed the rest. 4. Then the Lord Jesus said to the boys, I will command these figures which I have made to walk. 5. And immediately they moved, and when he commanded them to return, they returned. 6. He had also made the figures of birds and sparrows, which, when he commanded to fly, did fly, and when he commanded to stand still, did stand still; and if he gave them meat and drink, they did eat and drink. 7. When at length the boys went away and related these things to their parents, their fathers said to them, Take heed, children, for the future, of his company, for he is a sorcerer; shun and avoid him, and from now on never play with him.” - The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ: Chapter 15

The Second Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ.

This is also known as The Infancy Gospel of Thomas – probably a fragment of the Gospel of Thomas, and was written around 140 CE.

“I, Thomas, an Israelite, judged it necessary to make known to our brethren among the Gentiles, the actions and miracles of Christ in his childhood, which our Lord and God Jesus Christ wrought after his birth in Bethlehem in our country, at which I myself was astonished; the beginning of which was as follows. 2. When the child Jesus was five years of age and there had been a shower of rain that was now over, Jesus was playing with other Hebrew boys by a running stream, and the waters ran over the banks and stood in little lakes; 3. But the water instantly became clear and useful again; they readily obeyed him after he touched them only by his word. 4. Then he took from the bank of the stream some soft clay and formed out of it twelve sparrows; and there were other boys playing with him. 5. But a certain Jew seeing the things which he was doing, namely, his forming clay into the figures of sparrows on the Sabbath day, went presently away and told his father Joseph, 6. Behold, your boy is playing by the river side, and has taken clay and formed it into twelve sparrows, and profanes the Sabbath. 7. Then Joseph came to the place where he was, and when he saw him, called to him, and said, Why do you that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath day? 8. Then Jesus clapping together the palms of his hands, called to the sparrows, and said to them: Go, fly away; and while you live remember me. 9. So the sparrows fled away, making a noise. 10. The Jews seeing this, were astonished and went away and told their chief persons what a strange miracle they had seen wrought by Jesus.” - The Second Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ: Chapter 1

Muslim Objections Refuted:

This parallelism has never been explained by Muslims except to use it to perversely claim that the Bible is corrupted. They argue that the original Bible contained the apocryphal story of Jesus making and animating clay birds, and that the Qur'an was merely correcting a wrongful exclusion of these apocrypha from the canon.
This is erroneous as the sira tells how Muhammad, far from receiving these stories from Allah (via the angel Jibreel/Gabriel), heard it from three Christians. Saifullah & Azmy of Islamic-awareness have kindly provided the following evidence below:

"Those who talked to Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, were Abu Haritha Ibn `Alqama, Al-`Aqib `Abdul-Masih and Al-Ayham al-Sa`id. They were Christians according to the faith of the king with differences between them; they say: He is Allah, and say: He is Son of Allah, and say: He is the third of three [i.e., part of Trinity] and these are the claims of Christianity. [They use as evidence for their claim that He is Allah the argument that] he used to raise the dead, cure the sick, create from clay bird-like structure then breathe into it to make it a [living] bird. All this was by the leave of Allah, the Praiseworthy the Exalted {to appoint him as a sign for men} (Maryam:21). They also argue for saying that he is Son of Allah by saying he had no known father and spoke in infancy which is something never done by any human being. They use as evidence for their claim that He is the third of three [i.e., part of Trinity] the argument that Allah says: We did, We commanded, We created and We judged [i.e., by using the plural for Himself], and whereas if He was one, He would say: I did, I judged, I commanded and I created; but it is He, Jesus and Maryam. The Qur'an was revealed addressing all these arguments.”

“The names of the fourteen principal men among the sixty riders were: `Abdul-Masih the `Aqib, al-Ayham the Sayyid; Abu Haritha b. `Alqama brother of B. Bakr b. Wa`il; Aus; al-Harith; Zayd; Qays; Yazid; Nubayh; Khuwaylid; `Amr; Khalid; `Abdullah; Johannes; of these the first three named above spoke to the Apostle. They were Christians according to the Byzantine rite, though they differed among themselves in some points, saying He is God; and He is the son of God; and He is the third person of the Trinity, which is the doctrine of Christianity. They argue that he is God because he used to raise the dead, and heal the sick, and declare the unseen; and make clay birds and then breathe into them so that they flew away; and all this was by the command of God Almighty, 'We will make him a sign to men.' They argue that he is the son of God in that they say he had no known father; and he spoke in the cradle and this is something that no child of Adam has ever done. They argue that he is the third of the three in that God says: We have done, We have commanded, We have created and We have decreed, and they say, If He were one he would have said I have done, I have created, and soon, but He is He and Jesus and Mary. Concerning all these assertions the Qur'an came down.”

"The parallelism between the Qur'an’s ‘Jesus animating clay birds’ verses and the apocryphal infancy gospels is strong, suggesting that Allah was not the author of the Qur'an, nor is he the God of the Christians. There are various reasons why these apocryphal gospels are not included in the canon; the First Gospel of the Infancy is a comparatively late work while the Second Gospel of the Infancy (actually a fragment of the Gospel of Thomas) is a famous forgery. Both these apocrypha contain verses that contradict the canonical Gospels.

According to the sira, the purported sources of the story are three Christians who spoke to Muhammad. These Christians were either heretics or they were unsure of doctrine as their errancies were then repeated in the Qur'an. These errancies include Jesus animating clay birds, the talking baby Jesus, and the Trinity comprising God, Jesus and Mary (Father, Son and Mother)."

So what will you do now? The historical evidence regarding those two ancient Christian texts predates the Quran by hundreds of years, and clearly demonstrates that Muhammad used the cultural and religious beliefs of some of the Arabian Christians and included those beliefs and texts into his Quran.

Any attempt to dispute this will undoubtedly demonstrate again your intellectual dishonesty, but by all means, go ahead.

How can anyone become an atheist when we are all born with no beliefs in the first place? We are atheists because we were born this way.